The Driest Season Read online

“Do you want to come in?” Cielle asked.

  “It’s hot and smells in there, no, I don’t want to come in.”

  “It’s just a barn,” Cielle said.

  “Of course it’s just a barn,” her mother said. “Hurry up and get out of there before you pass out from the heat. Your grandmother wants you to come play something on your violin.” She left the door open and walked back to the house.

  The red and yellow mallets leaned against the wall, just behind the bale where Cielle sat. She picked them up, held one in each hand, and walked to where her father had hung on Monday. The rope was gone, the tractor was gone, the wheelbarrow was in a new corner, and the dirt had been raked over. She walked to the spot where she had knelt below her father. She scuffed her shoe over the dirt. The soft layer brushed aside, and beneath it was dark. She stuck the head of the yellow mallet into it, ground it around, and lifted it for a look. She blew away a layer of dirt and there was a red smear on the wood.

  “Shit.” She banged the mallet on the ground, and it made a hollow thud. Her arms vibrated from the impact. She stood for moments, not moving. She felt sick, and set the yellow mallet behind the bale and covered it with hay.

  Why? she thought. Why bother? Why make it worse?

  No one talked about suicide. Even if people thought someone had killed himself or herself, they didn’t ask. Mr. Daly had died the year before from a “hunting accident,” even though everyone knew he was a hopeless drunk whose shotgun went off in his house. Tommy Bauer died by accidental drowning, even though everyone knew the war had made him crazy and that he had walked straight into the Mississippi with rocks in his pockets.

  The hot air closed in, she felt light-headed, and had to get out of the barn.

  She told Katherine she was sorry but the mallets were missing, and then went inside and tuned her violin. She hadn’t played for days. Her grandmother sat in the armchair in the living room by the window and sipped on iced tea with lemon and mint. Cielle sat on the couch across from her and slid rosin over her bow.

  “I never could play anything,” her grandmother said, crossing her legs and resting the drink on her knee. “I couldn’t read music.”

  Every time her grandmother came to visit, she asked Cielle to play and they had this very same conversation. Cielle had been playing violin for five years now, and she was good. Since her school was small and there were only fifteen summer school students, Cielle had the music room to herself in the afternoons. She practiced after the geometry and physics classes she had to make up. Both classes were still hard for her the second time around, and she struggled to understand them. Matter, the interaction of forces and energy, and theories were not her strength. She understood literature and music. Things you could touch and see and hear.

  “It’s memorization and practice,” Cielle said, and picked up the violin. She plucked each of the four strings to find its pitch and adjusted the tuning pegs.

  “How do you even know what the right sound is when you’re doing that?” her grandmother asked.

  “She has bat-ears,” Cielle’s mother said from the kitchen. “She could tune and play in the dark.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Cielle said. She lifted the violin, nestled her chin in the chin rest, and raised her bow. Her pinkie stuck out. Her mother sat on the arm of the chair next to her grandmother. Cielle looked at her mother and thought, Who are you? What have you done? Cielle slowly slid her bow over the strings.

  “My favorite,” her grandmother said.

  Cielle played Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Her grandmother closed her eyes and waved her hand back and forth in front of her with the music. Helen and Bodie came in through the back door. Soon aunts and uncles and even the younger cousins came inside to listen. Her grandmother smiled and looked peaceful, so Cielle kept playing. She played by memory, her fingers moving of their own accord. There was not a noise in the room except for the violin.

  All the windows in the house were open and a cool gust of wind came in behind her mother and the top of her dress puffed full of air. Cielle played to the wind, to the darkening sky coming toward them, to her family gathered in one room, all her family, all part of her, together. This is the sound of sadness, she thought. This is the sound of how the living remember the dead. She played and played until a stronger gust of wind blew in and knocked over and broke a delicate clay vase on the side table, and then she stopped.

  “The sky’s real dark.” One of her cousins pointed west with a baseball mitt still on his hand.

  “Finally, some rain,” Mr. Mitchell said.

  “Wouldn’t that be something,” an uncle said.

  Her grandmother stood. “Thank you for playing, Cielle.” She clapped and looked around the room until everyone clapped. Cielle took a small bow.

  “Let’s bring lunch inside,” Mrs. Mitchell said.

  The adults went outside to bring in the food. Cielle stayed where she was and put her violin back in its case. The sky was still blue and bright over their farm, but the air was changing, cooling and blowing over the baked and wilting fields.

  Cielle’s mother balanced a loaf of bread and a wooden salad bowl. “Come here,” she said. “Take this bread.”

  Cielle took the bread and her mother set the bowl on the kitchen table.

  “That was lovely playing. You have good instincts.” Her mother picked up the salad mixers and tossed the lettuce quickly and with force. A piece of lettuce flew out of the bowl onto the table. People streamed into the house with food, plates, glasses, silverware, tablecloths, and the room filled with chatter. Her mother picked up the piece of lettuce from the table and ate it.

  Cielle had wanted answers since she was a small child. She wanted to know how the world was made, and why people said and did the things they did. She wanted to know her place in the universe, her purpose, and what it all meant. She wanted to know why, but no one ever had any answers for her. Her father had told her she should find her own answers and not rely on others’ explanations of the world, and not to rely on others to tell her what to do or what was true. Her father had always made sense to her, until now.

  “Mom, Mr. Skaar said you forgot to pay. He said you’d know how much it cost,” Cielle said.

  Her mother said nothing.

  “He asked that I bring him the money.”

  “Why did he ask you?”

  “To help you out.”

  “Fine. That’s fine.”

  “He said to tell you Mr. Olsen from Muscoda is asking questions.”

  “Mr. Olsen from Muscoda?”

  “I think Mr. Skaar knows the truth and Mr. Olsen wants it.”

  “He wants the truth?”

  Cielle’s grandmother walked in carrying a glass pitcher of lemonade in the crook of her arm, her other hand supporting the bottom. “I heard the word truth,” she said.

  “Of course you did,” Cielle’s mother said.

  Her grandmother bent over and slowly set the pitcher on the table. “Take it from an old woman.” Her grandmother wiped her hand on her skirt. “People have to live with their own lies.”

  Cielle had lied about small things before: about coming home late, not finishing homework, drinking beer. Nothing like what she knew her mother and grandmother were talking about. Nothing like what she was carrying around now: the kind of lies that created a deeper and darker crevice between people, the kind of lies that could never be taken back, the kind of lies that ruined lives. She thought lying wasn’t about privacy but about choosing to be unknown, choosing to be anonymous, and sometimes about protection. She’d always thought the truth was worth knowing, but maybe she’d been wrong. Yet, she’d still rather know the truth than not. She’d rather know what part of her father and mother were a part of her.

  “The only thing you want to know is when someone stops loving you,” her grandmother said. “But you usually know long before they ever say a thing.”

  “You’re right on that.” Her mother cut the loaf of homemade bread with a long serrat
ed knife.

  “I know,” her grandmother said.

  Her mother placed the sliced bread into a basket, and then wiped her eyes dry with the dish towel. “I’ve got to roll up the windows before it rains.” She made her way to the truck, her legs thin and pretty as she walked steadily over the grass and dirt in heels.

  “Nothing romantic about love, Cielle,” her grandmother said. “It’s hard work to love somebody. Nobody ever tells you that. And it’s hardest when they leave you without reason or warning.”

  A wind came and brown locust pods twirled down like propellers. Her mother opened the truck door, sat in the seat, shut the door, and rolled up the windows. She stayed in the truck, her hands on the wheel, as if she might drive straight out into the field and the woods beyond. Drive, drive fast, drive away.

  “Let’s start eating this food,” her grandmother said loudly. People milled toward the table. Mrs. Mitchell came in from outside, windblown.

  “Should we wait for Mom?” Helen asked her.

  “She needs a minute of quiet,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “Let her be.”

  They ate. An hour later, when they were finished, her mother was still in the truck. Nearing three in the afternoon, the relatives packed up, some to make their train in Richland Center and others to drive home. They walked by the truck window and knocked and waved, but her mother didn’t move. They worried and thought to stay, but her grandmother told them to go on home, and that she’d look after her. And so they left. The Mitchells stayed to help clean up. Her grandmother was staying for the burial the next day and however long she felt like staying beyond that.

  The sky darkened and rain came in slow, big drops. Then the sky opened up and the rain fell hard and loud, as if hundreds of people were clapping in applause.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FAR OFF the sky turned a dark shade of green, like a bruise. The temperature dropped. Rain turned into hail the size of gumballs and tree branches swayed, snapped, and fell.

  “Cellar,” Mr. Mitchell yelled, “everyone go down into the cellar.” He pointed to the cellar door, but Cielle looked outside for her mother, who was still in the truck.

  “I’ll get the windows shut,” Helen said.

  Cielle grabbed an umbrella and ran outside. She pulled on the driver’s-side door but it was locked. The truck windows were fogged but she could make out her mother’s form. Her arms were up high on the steering wheel and her head leaned against them as though she were napping.

  “Mom.” She pounded on the window. “Open up. We have to get to the cellar.”

  The window rolled down halfway. “It’s okay, Cielle. Nothing ever hits our property.”

  “Get out of the truck.”

  A gust whipped and turned her umbrella inside out. The hail, now the size of small pebbles, hit and stung her arms and neck, pricking her skin. Cielle hunched over to shield her face, and righted the umbrella. A hailstone hit her cheek and her skin burned and her eyes watered. When she stood, her mother had rolled up her window and the door was still locked.

  “Cielle,” Mr. Mitchell yelled from the doorway. “Get in here. Anything could fall from that locust.”

  “My mother,” Cielle yelled, and wasn’t sure he could hear her. The noise from the hail and the wind was like yelling over a motor. “She won’t unlock the door.” She yanked on the handle again.

  Mr. Mitchell pulled his coat up over his head and ran to her.

  “This is no joke,” he said. “Get inside now.”

  “Not without Mother.”

  Mr. Mitchell knocked on the window. It rolled halfway down again.

  “Go away, Jim, and get Cielle inside.”

  “Olive, this isn’t a false alarm. You can’t stay in this truck. This isn’t the time to be a pain in the ass.” Mr. Mitchell reached his arm through the window and pulled up the lock. Her mother rolled up the window on him, but he was stronger and pushed down on the glass and opened the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” her mother said. “Leave me alone.”

  Thunder cracked and boomed. Cielle felt it in her chest like a drum.

  Mr. Mitchell pulled her out of the truck. “Let’s go,” he said.

  The hail slowed to sporadic drops, but Cielle held the umbrella over her mother anyway. Hail littered the drive and lawn like small white pebbles, and they crunched under their feet.

  “Stop treating me like an invalid,” she said. Cielle could tell she’d been crying; her eyelids were tender and swollen. She twisted in Mr. Mitchell’s grip and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Her hair was wild.

  The hail stopped, and so did the wind.

  “Hurry,” Mr. Mitchell said.

  It was damp, humid, and quiet in the cellar. There weren’t any windows and it was dark, save the one candle glowing in the middle of the floor and around which everyone sat.

  “Oh, thank God,” Cielle’s grandmother said as they came down the stairs. “You could have blown to Michigan in that truck.”

  Cielle sat next to Helen and Bodie, by the jars of raspberry and apricot jam, pickled vegetables and honey.

  “Don’t be dramatic,” Cielle’s mother said, and stood in front of everyone like a preacher. “Nothing ever hits our property.” Her mother shook out her hair and smoothed it back, twisted it up, and tied it into a loose bun at the nape of her neck.

  “Never say never,” her grandmother said.

  Her mother tapped her right heel on the cement floor. Click click click. Cielle wondered if she’d been drinking in the truck. Her shoe tapped faster. Click click, click click, click click. She breathed loudly in and out of her nose and reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a piece of writing paper folded into a square. She rotated the paper in a circle and touched each of the pointed edges with the tips of her forefingers. She looked at Cielle, pursed her lips, and then looked away. She smiled, held the paper up in front of her, shook her head no from side to side, and carefully unfolded it.

  “What is that?” Cielle’s grandmother asked.

  “Olive, sit down,” Mr. Mitchell said.

  She folded the note back up and laid it on a stairstep. “I don’t know what to say.” She walked to the shelves, took a jar of dill pickles, and twisted off the top. She pulled a pickle out of the jar and the juice dripped onto the floor. Everyone looked at the note, but no one moved.

  “I don’t understand.” Cielle’s mother bit off half the pickle and chewed. Then she pointed the other half of the pickle at Mr. Mitchell. “How did this happen?”

  “Don’t say another word,” Mr. Mitchell said. “Sit down.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to die.” Her mother threw the glass jar at the wall and it shattered.

  Cielle’s grandmother stood and lowered her mother down to sit, and held her, rocking her back and forth. “He wasn’t supposed to die,” she cried.

  Helen reached out to Cielle’s hand and held it. Cielle looked at her. Cielle didn’t know how they would come out of this. She didn’t know how her mother would be able to live with what she had done.

  Suddenly air rushed above them like a waterfall and there was a deep pounding like the sound of a train coming full speed, something heavy and mean coming their way.

  “Get close and lock arms,” Mr. Mitchell said. “Put your head to your knees.”

  Cielle locked arms with Helen and Bodie, closed her eyes, and pressed her head into her knees. Not today, don’t let this happen today. She smelled jasmine perfume on Helen, the mildew and concrete of the cellar, the laundry soap on her dress, and the brine and vinegar of pickles.

  Window glass popped and shattered above. There was a crack of thunder, and the house groaned in the wind. She imagined shingles flying off one after another, a deck of cards flung in the air. Then there was a crash and boom of something fallen, and Cielle felt it in her body.

  “Something’s down,” her grandmother said.

  “The locust,” Bodie said.

  “Something bigger,” Mr. Mitchell said.

 
The roar above passed like a living thing in motion. Then there was silence. Her ears rang.

  “Everyone stay put,” Mr. Mitchell said. He scooped up the note, tucked it into his pocket, and went upstairs. Cielle followed. She shut the cellar door behind her and Mr. Mitchell turned and held her shoulders firmly; his hands were cool from resting on the concrete.

  “Go back downstairs,” he said.

  “Give it to me.” Cielle held out her hand, palm up.

  There was a spot near his upper lip where he’d missed shaving, and the stubble was a perfect small dark edge. It reminded her of a patch of grass missed by the mower. He had a red broken blood vessel under his eyelid, small and bright. A little jagged river of blood.

  “I want to know what he wrote. Give it to me.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, his mouth dark and empty like a cave, but no sound came out. He reached into his pocket and held out the note. She took it and looked past him out the window, and her insides dropped and hollowed.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no.”

  Mr. Mitchell turned. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  The barn was gone. There was a heap of splintered wood, as if a string had been pulled and the barn collapsed in place. Gone. A pile of red boards, of pine beams, of hay, of a tractor, a rope, a wheelbarrow, a bloodied yellow croquet mallet somewhere buried underneath. The world needed to wipe out this place where something bad had happened. The barn couldn’t be there anymore.

  A large locust limb lay across her grandmother’s car. It sat on the hood in a deep dent and the front tires were flattened. She took the note, kicked open the screen door, and went outside. The heat had returned to the air and a swallow sat on the roof of the crushed car. The tires hissed leaking air. She sat on the hood of the car and the swallow flew away toward a triangle of bright blue sky—it was electric-blue, glass-bottle-blue, a jewel behind the dark clouds.

  The house was unscathed by the tornado except for two broken windows. Cielle was comforted by the sight of her bedroom and her things. In the corners of the mirror over her dresser she’d stuck photos of her friends, her grandparents, and one of her, Helen, and her parents in front of the Christmas tree last winter. The tree’s lights had a soft fuzzy glow. On top of her dresser sat a silver box with her initials engraved in cursive on the top—LPJ—for Lucille Patricia Jacobson. Inside she kept jewelry and keepsakes. A note from Darren Olsen that read, You play the violin well, you have pretty green eyes. A dried four-leaf clover. A smooth and shiny piece of green glass she’d found by the creek. A gold locket from her dead maternal grandmother, Viola; a woven bracelet from Helen; her mother’s lace handkerchief; and the delicate wooden bird pin her father had made for her. Next to her box sat a fluted quartzite spearpoint from the banks of Mill Creek.